Videos tagged “tornado”

Within minutes of learning that Joplin had been hit by the May 22, 2011 tornado, KOMU reporters hit the road for the 500-mile round trip.
Our coverage never ended. From May 22, 2011 to May 22, 2012 KOMU’s Jim Riek and Michelle Bogowith made a combined thirty-nine trips to Joplin. Each trip included anywhere from two to eight KOMU reporters.
On the weekend of the tornado’s anniversary, the KOMU staff wanted to finish what we started. Our live coverage started Sunday night, May 20, 2012. We did live hits at 9pm and 10pm. Our coverage continued all day Monday, May 21, 2012, including the President’s commencement address to the Joplin High School class of 2012. On Tuesday morning our coverage began at 5am on the anniversary of the tornado that killed 161 people, destroyed 8,000 buildings, and caused about $3.5 billion in property damage.

In this video I interview my brother who was in Joplin at the time of the EF-5 tornado that ripped through town on May 22, 2011. He walks through the apartment buildings that he build a few years ago looking over the devastation and recalling memories of our hometown that would never look the same again!

Over Memorial Day weekend, I traveled to Joplin, MO to volunteer with the tornado cleanup. This is the footage I was able to capture.
Joplin still has much more work left before the city has a sense of normalcy. For donation or volunteer information, please visit:
www.211missouri.org

The day after the devastating tornado hit, Amy, Mick, Geri and I left for Joplin, Missouri. We all had our different roles as the week went on and we continued to remain flexible and help however we could. You can read about our experiences at http://www.josh-walker.com.